Listed in directories from the 1860s until around 1905. MB writes that it brewed its own ale until circa 1900, when the All Saints Brewery took over.
Thomas George Wilford served as mine host in the early 1860s.
In June 1868, teams of Bird Catchers and Pigeon Flyers held a novel cricket match on the pastures. The bird catchers all came from T. G. Wilford’s beerhouse, the County Arms, emerging from the pub dressed in a variety of coloured dresses in a procession that took in Wharf Street, up Rutland Street, down Granby Street, along Church Gate to the Pastures Cricket Ground, much to the amusement of passers by. The match itself was watched by thousands, played in a light-hearted vein, with the Pigeon Fanciers beating the Bird Catchers by six runs after two innings each. It was followed in the evening by a dinner at the County Arms.
Just before Christmas 1869, James Smith was accused of drunk and disorderly in the County Arms. Entering the pub, Smith offered to fight ‘the best man in the house.’ The waiter threw him out but he returned and threw a jug of water over the bar. There were around fifty people in there at the time. In his defence, Smith said he was a beer house keeper himself and when he entered the County Arms someone called him a ‘knobstick’ which enraged him. Fined 10/6 or seven days.
In August 1874, Wilford’s licence was objected to when a letter was sent to the Brewster sessions from ‘the ladies of Leicester’ complaining of widespread misery crime and disease traceable to the evils of drink and the County Arms. Thomas Wilford won his appeal against this the following month by showing that many ladies used his house. Sept of that year Wilford applied to up grade his beerhouse licence to an ‘old type full’ as pre 1830 beerhouse act. this was refused.
Wilford gave up the licence in 1875, and it was taken on by William Austin, who had been a waiter at the beerhouse.
The County Arms licence was refused and then closed in December 1915 under the Compensation scheme.
